A definition of faith I've always liked is that it's belief in the face of objective uncertainty. This implies that faith involves a level of trust rather than a sense of knowing. So we do the best we can with everything that's available to us - the Bible, church, books, the testimony of others and personal experience etc. - and then commit fully to that but still acknowledging some doubt and uncertainty. One benefit of this is that if we can tolerate doubt in ourselves we'll be more tolerant of others
OTOH, I can see why some people might say that, because we're talking about God and it's so important, our beliefs should be absolutely certain and so He would provide a way for that to be possible. As I understand it, this is why the Catholic church incorporates infallibility, under certain conditions and rarely used, and why others might assign infallibility to personal experiences of the Holy Spirit they believe they have.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
I can't speak to the position of the Catholic church.
In terms of a subjective, individual disposition, I think infallibility (certainty?) is potentially unhealthy. I would say, rigorous self-honesty is a more desirable Christian disposition to have. In general, the unwillingness to admit one's fallibility is self-deceiving. I can be wrong about important matters. I have been wrong in the past, and will be wrong again. That doesn't mean I don't believe what I believe, it just means I know I could be wrong. Knowing my cognitive limits is part and parcel of knowing who I am as a creature and living appropriately to that ontological and epistemic status.
The other thing to mention is that there are levels of certainty (credulity). I believe some things more strongly than others. It seems appropriate that my credence level (i.e. strength of my belief) is going to be in some kind of relation to how I came by the belief in question. Did I come by that belief through observation? Reason? Did I have a dream? Did it come from reading the scriptures?
Then there is the community aspect. If I think I saw a bear in the field, and I am not sure (my credence level is mid-to-low), I can ask my friend standing beside me if she saw the bear as well. If she says, yes, my credence level will go up. If, no, then it should go down. If I insist I saw a bear without acknowledging she did not see it, even though she was looking at the same time, I am not being intellectually honest. I don't have to say I was wrong, but I need to admit I might be wrong.
These considerations are important when it comes to Christian belief, as well. We rely on three primary sources for our Christian belief: 1. scripture, 2. internal witness of the Holy Spirit, 3. witness of the community (which includes Christian practice and worship). If we try to claim the scriptures are infallible, we are not being intellectually honest. From whence comes the infallibility? If we say from the Holy Spirit, where did we learn that? We learned it from the scriptures, so we're back where we started. If we say the scriptures are infallible on their own, then we treat the scriptures as self-authenticating. The Reformers tended to think of the scriptures as self-authenticating (e.g. it was an interpretive principle for John Calvin). That was in part a reaction to the RC emphasis on tradition; nonetheless, it was a mistake.
The claim that the scriptures are self-authenticating hangs in mid-air, and offers no recourse to those who disagree. If a non-believer comes to me asking why I believe what I do, I'm not going to say because my belief is infallible. That kind of response disregards their legitimate lack of belief. I'm not going to say because the scriptures are self-authenticating. How could I show that to my interlocutor? I can say on the basis of the Holy Spirit, and that should be said, but really all I can do is share my own experience and extend the offer for them to come and see for themselves (John 1:39, 46).
I can't make sense of Christians claiming objective infallibility, and then not being able to show its source to someone who asks, so that upon seeing the source of infallibility the one who asks could not fail to come to believe. That's just not the reality. There are people who legitimately don't believe. Such a position is intellectually dishonest, and it has no evangelical use. Subjective infallibility, as an individual disposition, is just asking for an existential crisis the first time things go south and you no longer have pat answers. So, fallibilism coupled with faith. Embrace it.
Fallibilism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
